


Laced With Its Presence

by minxy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1994280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxy/pseuds/minxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because you met an Ancient woman frozen in ice, doesn't mean you don't need a translator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laced With Its Presence

I remember the city, beautiful and grey, with lights of color everywhere balancing the stone, the cold of those last days. I remember the pronouncements of the physicians. I remember the look on my husband's face as he left me in my city; caretaker to a place at the end of its life, we thought, as I was at the end of mine. We thought I would walk the great path first. We thought I would wait for him there. 

My love. 

I carry my burden still, it would seem, in the chill memory of my bones. My arms remember the pain of deep cold. My hair feels stiff with ice. I would not carry such bodily pain in the next existence. I failed to find my way. I believe I have failed to die. 

And my pain now is cold ricocheting off silver sticks and dull clear fabrics. I awake to face a people wrapped in bubbles and masked in speech. I awake to the stabbing of ice in my fingers and fog in my thoughts. Have I journeyed down the wrong path? Am I walking towards lunacy instead of love? How can I feel the pain in my skin so acutely and yet be incapable of moving this body I do not want, in the company of strange people and spirits in this prison of ice? Where is my beloved? Why does he not help me? 

But I know the answer. He could never have known to look for me here, he would still watch for me ahead of him ahead of him on the great path, or among the ranks of the ascended, not dreaming that I would be held frozen to my body, unable to release my hold on it. 

I warm. 

With a calm creeping in my blood I recognize the feel of fabric. I see that the clothing on the strangers is to protect them from the cold that seeps away from me. A fresh-faced man, he unmasks his mouth. He smiles easily. A spirit knowledge says to me: _kindness._

I see a woman. I see they are not bonded, these two. I hear their words; the knowledge translates for my awed mind. 

_Names. Labels. Titles._

"Jonas." Jeanine. 

_We did not mean to harm or frighten._

"Sorry." 

Then perhaps I have not failed so completely. I did not want to be here, but perhaps it is not the evil I feared when I woke. They are different than I am? I ask my ethereal companion. _Yes and no. They are children of the people, but much of the knowledge has been lost._

Amazing. 

Then perhaps this is where I needed to be. If they have survived the illnesses, perhaps with their help none will have to separate from their loves as I have done. I think my beloved would like to know that I seek this even now. He would smile in a way I have not seen for some time. 

Time. Much time has passed, I feel. The unseen presence confirms this. Who are you? I ask. I hear a feeling of an ascended one. I do not believe. It is forbidden to interfere. I see a wistful color and I hear a term I do not understand. An explanation, limited by finite meanings: _I am not interfering with your enlightenment, lady. You have crossed paths with those I love and watch over. I am not really interfering with their spiritual paths either, just... translating._

A delicate distinction, I say in wonderment of such gall, you are nonetheless a strong influence on them. I feel warm amusement in response. Warmth radiates from his affection. There is a comfort in this company. He loves as I have done. He loves these that would talk to me, bring me strange food, clothe me in their bright cloud clothes. I am content with his presence, and with these kind ones that he loves. 

Until the woman falls in the illness fit. I have seen this too many times before. I give up my illusions born of disappearing cold. It is still chill here, the cloud clothing is a thin defense. I fall into myself and remember the throngs of life wasted to this disease. I fear the loss of life wasted, love wasted, a path undertaken before the spirit was ready. The presence remembers with me. He remembers the feel of dying. He remembers seeing his beloved hurting and all his love impotent to assist. He remembers. His beloved is with me here on this plane, a guardian. He sits peripherally, and he strives to protect, but he cannot. I want to tell the beloved that there is no protection from this plague, that all his striving will go to waste as his lover's did, but I cannot. I have not the words, only the understanding of my concerned spirit companion. 

_There was no plague here,_ the sweet faced young man tells me, no longer smiling. _We should have kept our shields over our faces, this is why we wear them._

I brought this plague to you, I understand. I cannot tell him, but I know with assurance: the face shield would not have saved you. And I was happy to see your smile. I want to hope we can walk together on the great path, but the sadness in the thought blankets me. I am too enmeshed in this plane. I am not ascended yet, for all my learning. I will mourn his death. I mourn it already. 

I hear names and titles and labels, as I look at him, translated by the anguished presence crying warm tears. I feel a cutting air swirl under the dull clear fabric doors, smell the promise of illness in the cold. I fight the chill with my breath, I walk with them following the ill wind. My gentle smiling boy speaks for me: _Wait, let her try. Let's see what she does._

I wish I could tell him what I will do, but I do not yet know. Still I feel my ascended companion beside me and within. We want the same things. Yes, we will fight, and he knows what to do. 

I reach towards the fallen man. My companion a warm spirit within to fight against the chill that radiates in illness. It burns us both to touch the man, but we act. 

We will fight the chill from the cold man's bones with touch. We will thaw the ice in his skin, and we will beat my heart against the illness that rides him. I see how the cold burns him. I see it leave him. I feel my companion step outside me to hold me up; but the gift of spirit drains me, and he loses his understanding of touch, and I fall. 

I wake to the anguished presence screaming in the silence around me. Reviving, needing... his beloved burns. 

They all burn. My frightened companion wants to help them all; he remembers dying in fire. The man I drove the illness from sits beside me as I rest. This man also wants to help them all. There is no time to rest, no time to regain strength, for I know the illness sleeps within me too. I have only this time, and I can feel it draining away even as I wish to hold on to my life and spirit. I will need his help, the man I healed. I take back what spirit was given, though I meant it as a gift, and will carry it to the others for him. All of us, we will try to warm the chill. 

I follow the smell of ice to a room with firm barriers and find they have laid themselves out. I touch the hollow of a throat, run my fingers through hair, my body burning with strange white hot light. My arm feels detached, my soul displaced. I run my finger over the smooth cheek of the boy who spoke to me and smiled. So different from the face I loved. My beloved. So different from the face of my companions beloved. I realize I have not seen him yet. My spirit staggers, my body drops. 

I recognize this feeling. My soul soars freer as my body stumbles to the last pallet, out of synch. I feel the urgency around me, the panic of the presence moving me. I see my arm reach out, I feel a sense memory of a passionate hand on firm chest: wiry grey hair resisting the action of long fingers straightening the curls and releasing them. Heat flourished between the two of them. They danced in it. But my hand does not reach close enough to the beloved, and it is not my memory, not my beloved. As my body fails, not even his lover's will can make me a bridge between them. I cannot give them a last touch of each other. I did not mean to fail his beloved. I moved without seeing. I failed to be strong enough. 

"Sorry" 

_Your beloved will come to you on the great path._ I offer my companion what comfort I can. It is not enough to mend his ripping fear. I take what anguish I remember of him into myself. _I was left behind when my beloved departed and I wished only for the separation to end. He will come where you are now, will he not? I did not mean to fail you._

I hear no answer. I can no longer feel his panicked presence near me; so when I leave the burden of my body for good, my spirit moves to lie over that of my companion's beloved. _I cannot bridge you with my body now, I whisper, but I will bridge your souls with words: do not despair, beloved. He waits for you on the other side of pain. He cannot interfere with your path, but I tell you, he is waiting. Do not fear the unknown._

I do not know if he believed me. I do not know if he understood, for the beloved's body burned with a cold fire even as I drifted farther from sensation and forgot. 

My spirit finds the great path and my soul undertakes the journey to where my own beloved waits as though pulled, the long separation a great abyss of time to be crossed and mended. The rejoining of soul mates wrenched apart a healing. I could not find my companion presence among the others, though I sought him. I wished for him that his wait before he and his lover were reunited might be shorter than my own had been, but I could not find him to tell him so, and thus my wishes were wasted. 

**Author's Note:**

> It's season 6. Season 6 is about loss, and unseen, uncredited company when you need it most.
> 
> The loss of you is like  
> Thread through a needle  
> Everything I do is laced with its presence.  
> -Warren S. Stave


End file.
